# All Questions

10,678 questions
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### Were Soviet spacecraft production facilities as widely dispersed as American production facilites?

The geographic location of facilities to produce components of American spacecraft has long been influenced by politics. High-ranking members of Congress would often pressure NASA officials to award ...
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### What information was stolen from JPL during the Raspberry Pi hack?

The Engadget article A rogue Raspberry Pi helped hackers access NASA JPL systems highlights an incident where a networked Raspbery Pi at JPL was used to gain access to several other networks, ...
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### Moon based railgun [on hold]

Why not build a moon based railgun for deflecting an asteroid on a collision course with earth? Very low atmosphere would seem like an ideal setting. Any other uses for this device, defense, solar ...
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### What is the distinction between detaching, jettisoning, and dumping?

What is the difference between the terms detach, jettison, and dump? Related Aviation.SE question: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/q/22903
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### Are the APUs on the SLS SRBs planned to be hydrazine powered?

I recently read that the Space Launch System core stage, which uses renamed / slightly reworked Space Shuttle Main Engines and therefore requires a hydraulic system to service said engines, will use ...
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### Was the Titan SRM thrust vs time curve engineered to allow for acceleration switches to initiate staging sequence events?

This answer describes the timing between the Titan III Stage 0 (SRM's) and Stage 1 events. The Titan first stage ignited just prior to SRM separation: Titan Stage I ignition occurs at ...
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### How often did launch vehicles have a “Stage 0”, and what does it mean exactly?

While trying to do some reading for the question Need help understanding staging shown in infographic of Titan launch of Hexagon satellites I ran across the Wikipedia article for Titan III. This ...
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### Need help understanding staging shown in infographic of Titan launch of Hexagon satellites

The NPR News item I Spy, Via Spy Satellite: Melting Himalayan Glaciers discusses use of declassified historical satellite images that include glaciers, and link to the newly published and Open Access ...
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### Why was the Saturn V considered to be human-rated after Apollo 6?

Apollo 6 (AS-502) was the second flight of the Saturn V (the first having been Apollo 4/AS-501, five months earlier), the last flight of a Block I CSM,1 and the last unmanned Apollo mission (if one ...
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### Can astronomy use the black hole at the center of the Milly way as true south on a space compass? [on hold]

Can astronomy use the black hole at the center of the Milly way as true south on a space compass? As far as space travel is concerned they claim to not use any space compass. Would this be a good ...
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### Undisturbed planetary alignment after galactic collision [on hold]

How do planets still orbit around the empty space where a black hole was after a black hole absorbs the milky way's black hole and keeps moving through space without disturbing surrounding planets ...
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### Space Shuttle Moon Mission? [duplicate]

Theoretically speaking, could the shuttle have performed TLI, LOI, and TEI burns given extra OMS fuel? approximately how much fuel and payload bay space/mass would this take up and might there ...
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### How microgravity in space affects body parts

There are things that naturally face downwards, like hands. How would they be affected in space microgravity? Would they rise or point downwards?
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### Recalculate Orbital Elements after a ΔV

I would like to write a program able to simulate a keplerian orbite given an initial position and velocity (r0, v0) and able to manage accelerations in different directions. To simulate the orbit, I ...
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### What Gravity does the Sun affect items with at the distance of 1 AU?

At the surface of the Earth, the force of gravity is defined as 1 G. I am wondering what gravitational force the sun excerts at the distance of 1 AU (the distance Earth is at). Imagine it like this; ...
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### What was the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft escape tunnel?

The Wikipedia article for the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft mentions an escape tunnel: The avionics and engines were also upgraded, and an escape tunnel system similar to that used on Boeing's first 747 ...
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### How to become an astronaut?

I am a pure/applied mathematics student at Tehran University. About 2 or 3 years later I will get my bachelor's degree and start studying master's in applied math or theoretical physics. And maybe I ...
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### Why was Apollo 17 considered to have “achieved a very successful geological survey”?

They listed out all the apollo missions, with blurbs about what the outcomes were, for example here's 15, 16 and 17: 15 - Landed on moon and deployed lunar rover. 16 - Landed on moon and deployed ...
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### Are Lagrangian points associated only with the smaller body?

Diagrams of Lagrangian points I've seen always show the points near the smaller object, following its orbit about the larger one. For instance: from Wikipedia. But in fact the smaller object ...
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### Why does the Saturn V have standalone inter-stage rings?

Why are they not integral to the lower stages, e.g. like the Falcon 9? This applies not only to the ring between the first and second stage and also to the shoulder between the second and third stage.
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### Did the heat shield of the Vostok 1 capsule ablate during reentry?

This Wikipedia article (in german) has some information about the heat shield of Vostok 1. The heat shield was made from asbestos, its thickness was increased from 3 cm to up to 18 cm. The weight of ...
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### How much did it cost to refurbish the Launch Complex 39 hardware after an Apollo Saturn V launch?

A launch pad used for a rocket of some 30-35 MNewtons of thrust does not come out of it unscathed. It must be refurbished before it can be used again. How much does that cost? As an indication of such ...
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### How can I calculate the azimuth from an earth station to a satellite

I have computed the ecef coordinates of both the user location on the ground, the satellite's ecef coordinates, as well as other inputs such as altitude, lat, long of both satellite and earth station....
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### What was the exact nature of the observations of “solar flare activity” that delayed the launch of Vostok 5?

The interesting story of Vostok 5 recounted in Encyclopedia Astronautica's Vostok 5 (linked in comments below this answer) includes the following passage: Vostok 5 was originally planned to go for ...
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### How accurate can a point in space be determined by the likes of the ICRF?

How accurately could a 3D point in open space (i.e. not on an object), say at an elevation of 30,000m above sea level, be located or modelled using the likes of the International Celestial Reference ...
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### What's this mini-cupola-looking object in this photo from the ISS?

(I went through this exercise for my own benefit, so I figured I'd post it) Recently stay-extended astronaut Christina Hammock Koch posted this image to Facebook today and the object indicated by the ...
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### Why was the Communications Carrier Assembly black and white?

I understand the CCA, the headset for NASA astronauts, was made up of lycra and teflon fabrics. Is there a reason, relevant to space flight, that the two materials were different colors?
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### Noise inside an ACES/pumpkin suit helmet?

As I understand it there was plenty of noise inside a NASA EVA suit helmet from fans circulating the air. Was the Advanced Crew Escape Suit helmet for launch and reentry similarly noisy?
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### Would SpaceX's Starlink constellation contribute inordinately to space debris?

I mean they already launched a large constellation of 60 satellites and have plans to launch many more; won't all this contribute inordinately to existing space junk, which is actually becoming a real ...
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### How did the Vostok ejection seat safely eject an astronaut from a sealed space capsule?

Wikipedia's Yuri Gagarin says: At about 23,000 feet (7,000 m), Gagarin ejected from the descending capsule as planned and landed using a parachute. and the section Vostok_programme; Vostok 3KA ...
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### How exactly were solid-fuel rockets added to the parachute lines of the Voskhod capsule?

This answer notes that Voskhod: ...added a small solid-fuel rocket to the parachute lines. It fired as the descent module neared touchdown, providing a softer landing. How exactly did they safely ...
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### When did soviet capsules begin using retropropulsion immediately before landing?

Wikipedia's Yuri Gagarin says: At about 23,000 feet (7,000 m), Gagarin ejected from the descending capsule as planned and landed using a parachute. and the section Vostok_programme; Vostok 3KA ...
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### Launch Azimuth for Southeast launches

I've got the formula for launching to space going Northeast as $$\cos(inc) = \cos(lat) \sin(az)$$ and that works great but what if I wanted to go southeast? For example, I know that from a ...
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### Cubesat Communication Problems [on hold]

Can anybody tell me what are the current problems faced in cubsats especially in communications domain ? Can anybody please provide me some insights ?
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### Oxidizer Line Pressure of DIY Hybrid Rocket Engine Limits Thrust?

So I’ve seen engines like these which use gaseous oxygen as an oxidizer and then a solid tube as a fuel. But do these types of hybrid engines have any possibility of creating a useful amount of thrust?...
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### Why does the Falcon 9 launch heavier payload in LEO than Ariane V and the other way around for GTO?

Browsing a comparison of orbital launch systems on wikipedia, I notice that launcher capable of launching payload in GTO can launch in GTO approximately all the mass of the payload they can launch in ...
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### What preparations would Hubble have needed to return in a Shuttle?

This answer states that the Hubble Space Telescope was originally intended to be returned to Earth in a Shuttle. (from shuttle manifest published immediately before the Columbia failure, showing the ...
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### At the same temperature, what's the relation of speed of heat loss between Earth and Mars?

Mars has a thinner athmosphere than Earth. Let's say you have a similar shelter of the same volume and made of the same materials in Mars at -70 Celsius, and in Earth in some place in the Antarctica ...
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### How much of the recovery system does Spacex remove from a Falcon 9 when using it in an expended manner?

Falcon 9s have a limit to how many times they can be reused, and, for the last flight of a booster they don't make it land (in one piece), and instead use all the fuel to help the payload. That way ...
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### Shirtsleeves environment in Martian caves [duplicate]

Are there currently any places on Mars (that we know of) that are deep enough and warm enough that a human could survive with only an oxygen mask? Are there any caves, trenches, or valleys deep enough ...
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### Could the Lunar Rover jump start the Lunar Module in an emergency?

In Scott Manley's video Why Lunar Landers Had Jumper Cables For Emergencies he describes the "LOSS OF ED [Explosive Device] SUB-SYSTEM" procedure, which includes the use of a jumper cable called the "...
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### Converting Keplerian coordinates into Latitude and Longitude

Introduction My goal is follow up the title of this question and obtain the Earth coordinates (latitude, longitude) from the keplerian coords ...
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### Space Software Engineering [closed]

I am a software engineer having experience in application development in IT industry. I have completed M.Tech.in Computer Science from IIT. Khabe skills and worked on following: Java Jsp Servtlet ...
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### Time at 1 g acceleration to travel 100 000 light years

How long would it take to go 100,000 light years at a constant 1 g acceleration?
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### Do astronauts floating in space experience disorientation and how do they overcome it?

Sometimes we experience confusion where the north or south is especially when we are lying down or just awoken from sleep. Do astronauts experience something similar in space? If so, how do they ...
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In an article on the Space.com website, the author states "Very few astronauts have what's called the 'lead head'--immune from space adaptation syndrome or space sickness." I couldn't find any other ...
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### What will TransAstra Corp's MiniBee practice its Optical Mining technique on?

Space.com's NASA Eyes Wild Space Tech Ideas to Mine the Moon (and Asteroids, Too!) says: The other project is called Mini Bee and is led by Joel Sercel, founder and CEO of TransAstra Corp. Mini Bee ...
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### Precisely when did the Shuttle's roll program occur?

Previous answers state that the Shuttle launch roll program occurred as soon as practical after tower clear and was achieved by SRB thrust vector control. Can we get a more precise answer on the ...